Technology in Health Care Information Systems - Term Paper Example

Section/# Technology in Health Care Information Systems: An Analysis of Key Needs and Trends With relation to the state of the current technology that defines modern healthcare information systems, a series of key needs and shortcomings are exhibited. As a function of analyzing and understanding each of these key needs, this short analysis will seek to define a few of the drawbacks and shortcomings that are extant within the given system as well as to point to the ways that a level of improvement can be provided to meet the needs of the current period as well as the needs that will doubtless arise within the near future. As such, many of these improvements that will be recommended stem from a higher degree of security and interconnectivity that can be gained by improvements in systems and software throughout the healthcare industry (Angst 2011). Although a litany of improvements can of course be recommended within the healthcare information systems and their applications, the fact that such a high level of technological advancement has taken place over the past several years pushes the boundaries of what prior technology has been able to accomplish and requires that healthcare providers and shareholders seek to continually incorporate these new technologies and changes as a function of providing the highest possible level of service to the affected communities that they serve. The first of these recommendations would of course be concentric upon seeking to provide more user friendly, rapid, and interfaced means whereby doctors and nurses could rapidly input information into the patient’s file. The old form of this technology has necessarily been the antiquated use of a pad and a piece of paper to take notes, oftentimes illegible, that are then placed within an actual physical file for the patient as they receive treatment; whether within or without of the hospital (Oudshoorn 2012). Although changes to such an approach have been gradual, the fact remains that this rather archaic practice still largely exists and does not provide any clear benefit, and quite a few measurable drawbacks, to utilizing a more electronic enabled format to record the given information. In many hospitals around the nation, nurses and other healthcare providers have begun using laptops as a means to input key data with reference to the progression and care of patients within the hospital setting; however, this practice is something that has not been expanded to use by the doctors and nurses within the clinical field. Whereas it may be common to notice a nurse or other healthcare provider within the hospital transcribing notes onto a mobile workstation, finding a similar practice employed within the doctor’s office is almost unheard of. A key drawback to not accepting this level of technological change within both the hospital and the doctor’s office itself is the fact that a key and important level of inference and electronic cross reference is missed out upon. As databases continue to improve and expand, the level to which such practice of electronic records could shed light on a host of important metrics are innumerable. As medical technology continues to grow and the role of health privacy continues to be defined, a key concern with respect to patient rights is ensuring that any and all of the information systems that are provided within the field of medicine are as impervious as possible to the threat of security breaches (Sharma 2012). Although it is of course impossible to guarantee that any system will be impervious to the threat of hackers and others who are bent on obtaining illegal access to sensitive patient information, it is still nonetheless incumbent upon the healthcare providers and shareholders to ensure that the systems which they adopt, utilize, and increasingly make interconnected must place a very high level of emphasis on patient privacy. Lastly, although the level of technological representation within the field of medicine is extremely important, no development of technological gadgetry is useful unless a robust level of data management stands behind it as a means to provide the necessary storage, database management, cross referencing abilities, and interconnected compatibility to each and every other database and device in use within the field of medicine. Naturally, seeking to develop such a database that is capable of all of these things is something that vendors have long sought after. Although if everything was held constant such a database could foreseeably be within reach, the ultimate problem faced by those programmers and professionals that seek to design such a system is the fact that technology is in such a constant state of flux that it is difficult if not impossible to craft a system that is capable of integrating each of these factors that have been listed while still performing the functions that are required. In this way and to this end, the development of ever more efficient databases and information management systems is something that is akin to the Holy Grail; always desired but somehow just out of reach (Avancha et al 2012). In order to integrate more effectively, the health care management must seek to understand that the true and integral need of the industry is a simple integration of a higher degree of technology alongside the requisite training, and database support that can help to make the acquisition of new and expanding technology useful (Hass et al 2012). All too often the case has been shown where hospital management and healthcare professionals have band wagoned together in order to buy new systems in the hopes that new gadgetry will in and of themselves remedy workflow problems and provide a clear path forward, only to find later that training and database management were ignored and ultimately served to weaken the process as a whole. In such a sense, understanding technological integration as a function of progressive steps which seek to build upon one another is one of the only ways in which the technology can seek to make applications of healthcare more efficient, manageable, and intelligent. References Angst, C. M., Devaraj, S., Queenan, C. C., & Greenwood, B. (2011). Performance Effects Related to the Sequence of Integration of Healthcare Technologies. Production & Operations Management, 20(3), 319-333. doi:10.1111/j.1937-5956.2011.01218.x AVANCHA, S., BAXI, A., & KOTZ, D. (2012). Privacy in Mobile Technology for Personal Healthcare. ACM Computing Surveys, 45(1), 3:1-3:54. doi:10.1145/2379776.2379779 Hass, B., Pooley, J., Feuring, M., Suvarna, V., & Harrington, A. E. (2012). Health technology assessment and its role in the future development of the Indian healthcare sector. Perspectives In Clinical Research, 3(2), 66-72. doi:10.4103/2229-3485.96449 Oudshoorn, N. (2012). How places matter: Telecare technologies and the changing spatial dimensions of healthcare. Social Studies Of Science (Sage Publications, Ltd.), 42(1), 121-142. doi:10.1177/0306312711431817 SHARMA, S. (2012). TOWARDS STUDYING PUBLIC HEALTH INFORMATION SYSTEM DESIGN USING INFORMATION AND COMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES (ICTs). Indian Streams Research Journal, 2(11), 1-5. Read More